THE SCREEN; In 'Mayerling,' at the Filmarte, a New Solution of the Celebrated Habsburg Mystery Is Offered

By FRANK S. NUGENT

Published: September 14, 1937

So much depends on the viewpoint. When Maxwell Anderson contemplated the Mayerling tragedy In "The Masque of Kings" last season he gave scarcely more than superficial consideration to the romance between the Crown Prince Rudolph and the Baroness Marie Vetsera. What interested him more and motivated his drama was the political struggle, the clash between an impetuous liberal and an unyielding symbol of the old order. When Rudolph ultimately committed suicide over the body of his beloved Marie in the hunting lodge at Mayerling we could not feel it was all for love. There had been too many other conflicts, too many other defeats. The Vetsera affair was merely the capstone.

"Mayerling," the French film version of the same puzzling affair, which moved into the reopened Filmarte Theatre last night, simplifies the tragedy by stating it in purely romantic terms. There is a suggestion of intrigue, of political manoeuvring, of Rudolph's restless ambition to be something more than a court wastrel. But from the moment he meets the lovely Vetsera until that when he stands, a grief-bowed Romeo, before the still form of his Viennese Juliet, it is a love story—completely and beautifully a love story. They are the only people in their world; the rest are shadows; and when the shadows grow too black, they leave it.

It is, in my opinion, the proper approach to the almost legendary tragedy. By contrast, Mr. Anderson's play was cluttered up with fiction and brave, theatrical speeches and hollow emotions. Here, through Anatol Litvak's superb assembling of scenes and through the matchless performances of Charles Boyeras Rudolph and the unbelievably lovely Danielle Darrieux as the Vetsera, we are carried breathlessly along an emotional millrace, exalted and made abject as the dramatist directed. It is impossible to remain aloof, to regard the romance dispassionately. There is no resisting the fire that players, writer and director have struck from the screen.

An admissable objection is that the early scenes, while making a great show of illustrating the political cross-currents in the court of Franz Joseph, actually tell us nothing about the Crown Prince's interests or purposes; and, having served that doubtful end, are forgotten completely when the young Baroness Vetsera appears. They serve only to introduce Rudolph as a man consumed by stifled ambitions, distrustful, reckless, weary and debauched. Knowing him so well, we know, too, that Vetsera, whom he meets incognito and who innocently loves him for his stricken self, is his only salvation from madness.

Claude Anet, who wrote the novel from which the film is derived, has not seen fit to complicate their romance—as Anderson did—by suggesting that Vetsera actually was hired by the Emperor to spy upon his son. There were obstacles enough in the path: the Archduchess Stephanie, whom Rudolph had married by his father's command; his inability to obtain a divorce; the objections of Franz Joseph to the continuation of their affair; the fears of Vetsera's mother and brother. "Mayerling's" solution to the riddle of the hunting lodge is that it was murder and suicide, by agreement. History inclines as much to that theory as to any other.

And so from France has come another great photoplay, superbly produced, poetically written—the cadence of the French is beautiful even though one does not understand it—and faultlessly played. Miss Darrieux, since lured by Universal to Hollywood, has a cameo-like perfection of feature and a limpid serenity of manner which make her portrayal of the tragic young Baroness one of the hauntingly charming performances of the year. Mr. Boyer has never been better and there are others—Suzy Prim as the Countess Larisch, Jean Dax as the Emperor, in fact all the others—who have contributed to the creation of an irresistible love story.